The ancient hieroglyph for adoration is a gesture of opening that signified both the receipt of divine grace and the offering of the self. When a man or woman stands before God with arms opened wide, the heart is vulnerable to penetration. We allow God to slay us, to kill that which is "other" in us, then to enter and inhabit our form in order for God to know the Divine through us, to resurrect and reconstruct us as changed creatures, as bodies more fully filled with the Light of God.
Nothing is more difficult than prayer. In all other tasks of spiritual life, however exacting, one can sometimes rest, but there is no rest in prayer, up to the end of one's life.
